Mekong Delta Tour 3 Days From Ho Chi Minh City

Overview of Mekong Delta tour 3 days 2 nights

The Mekong Delta tour 3 days tour from Ho Chi Minh City is the most complete way to explore southern Vietnam’s river region.

Across My Tho, Ben Tre, Can Tho, and Chau Doc, this 3-day, 2-night itinerary blends iconic highlights — the Cai Rang Floating Market, Tra Su Forest, Sam Mountain — with lesser-known gems like the Cham village of Chau Phong, giving you the delta at its slowest and most rewarding.

3-day Mekong Delta tour itinerary

7:30 AM: Hotel pickup

Your Mekong Delta tour a day starts early with a friendly hotel pickup, right from your doorstep in Saigon.

If you’re staying outside the central area, simply head to our convenient meeting point—either way, we make sure your morning begins smoothly.

Once everyone is ready, your journey kicks off in a comfortable air conditioned car, leaving behind the city’s energy as we head toward southern Vietnam.

The distance from Saigon to Mekong is about 70 kilometers, usually taking around 2 to 2.5 hours.

But don’t worry—it never feels long. Along the way, your local tour guide will share stories about daily life, culture, and what makes this region so special.

Rice fields, small villages, and riverside scenes slowly unfold, giving you a real sense of the countryside.

This is more than just a transfer—it’s the beginning of a perfect escape.

As the journey flows naturally, you’ll feel the pace slow down, the air become fresher, and the experience shift into something truly authentic, just like how we locals enjoy the Mekong Delta.

9:15 AM: Vinh Trang Pagoda — My Tho

You begin your delta journey at Vinh Trang Pagoda which is built in the mid-19th century and never quite deciding between Vietnamese, Khmer, and French architectural styles.

Giant Buddha statues stand in the forecourt. The inner halls are painted in warm ochre and red.

Monks move quietly between columns. It is peaceful in a way that big-city temples rarely manage, and it sets the tone for everything that follows.

10:15 AM: Wooden boat on the Tien River — Four Islets

You board a traditional motor boat at the My Tho pier and head out onto the Tien River.

The four classic islets (Dragon, Phoenix, Unicorn, and Tortoise) sit in the current, low and green. 

11:00 AM  Unicorn Island — Bee farm & fruit orchard

You land on Thoi Son Island, which is known locally as Unicorn Island and you walk the shaded paths to a family-run bee farm.

You will taste honey straight from the comb and sip royal jelly tea. From there, a short walk leads to the orchard — rambutan, longan, pomelo, and guava

A local band plays traditional Southern Vietnamese folk music in the shade.

12:45 PM  Lunch on the island

You eat in an open-sided pavilion surrounded by fruit trees. A typical spread includes steamed river fish, morning glory stir-fried with garlic, caramelized pork in a clay pot, rice, and clear broth soup.

2:00 PM  Sampan ride through the coconut canals — Ben Tre

You will take a narrow wooden sampan and a local rower takes you into Ben Tre’s network of canals, tunneled entirely by water coconut palms arching overhead.

The ride lasts about 40 minutes and feels like you have paddled into a different century. Bring a camera, but do not be surprised if you spend the whole time just sitting there.

3:00 PM  Coconut candy workshop

You visit a family workshop that smells overwhelmingly of warm coconut.

Women sit at long tables rolling candy by hand, dipping each piece in sesame or pandan, and wrapping them in thin rice paper — a process unchanged for three generations. You are invited to try making one yourself.

Coconut Candy (Kẹo Dừa): The signature product. It comes in various flavors like original, durian, pandan, and peanut.

• Price: $1.50 – $3.00 per pack (250g – 400g).

Coconut Ginger Jam (Mứt Dừa): Dried coconut ribbons coated in sugar and ginger.

• Price: $3.00 – $5.00 per 500g bag.

Coconut Oil (Dầu Dừa): Pure, cold-pressed oil used for cooking or beauty.

• Price: $5.00 – $8.00 per 250ml bottle.

Coconut Shell Bowls: Polished and often lacquered or inlaid with eggshells.

• Price: $2.50 – $5.00 per bowl.

Kitchen Utensils: Spoons, spatulas, and chopsticks made from old coconut wood.

• Price: $1.00 – $3.00 per item.

Decorative Sculptures: Figurines (monkeys, owls, or traditional dolls) carved from dried coconut husks or shells.

• Price: $3.00 – $15.00 depending on complexity.

3:30 PM: Depart for Can Tho city

A wooden boat will pick you up to drift along the Mekong River back to the My Tho pier—the same spot where your tour began this morning.

As you leave the islands behind, we’ll hit the road toward Can Tho. The drive offers a front-row seat to the region’s lush scenery, where golden rice fields stretch across the fertile plains.

Along the way, you’ll cross two of the Mekong Delta’s most iconic landmarks:

• My Thuan Bridge: This was Vietnam’s very first cable-stayed bridge, inaugurated in 2000, and it serves as a vital gateway connecting the southwestern provinces.
• Can Tho Bridge: An impressive engineering feat, it holds the record for the longest main span in Southeast Asia and was built with support from the Japanese government.

By approximately 6:00 PM, you will arrive at the Ninh Kieu waterfront in Can Tho to check into your hotel just as the evening light turns long and golden over the river.

4:45 AM: Pickup from hotel — Ninh Kieu pier

Cai Rang Floating Market peaks between 5 and 7 AM, and if you arrive after 8, you have missed most of it. 

Your guide meets you in the lobby. A short drive to Ninh Kieu pier, where wooden motor boats are already idling with lanterns bobbing on the water. 

5:00 AM: Cai Rang Floating Market 

The boat reaches the market as the sky shifts from black to deep blue to a slow, burning orange.

Dozens of heavy wooden vessels cluster at the confluence of three rivers, each piled with the season’s produce — pineapples, pomelos, dragon fruit, live catfish, bundles of water spinach still wet from the canal.

Local sellers hang their goods on tall poles called cay beo so that buyers passing in smaller boats can spot what is for sale without shouting across the noise.

A woman rows toward you in a small canoe with a pot of Hu Tieu balanced on a portable gas burner.

You order a bowl and eat it as the sun comes up over the river, with the sound of engines and bargaining all around you. This is the best meal of the trip

7:30 AM: Rice paper & noodle workshop

You make a short stop at a family workshop where rice paper and dried noodles have been made by hand for decades.

Soaked rice is ground into batter, poured onto a mesh drum, steamed for thirty seconds, then peeled off in thin translucent sheets that dry on bamboo racks in the open air.

9:00 AM: Return to hotel — freshen up & check out

You return to Can Tho briefly to shower, repack, and check out. The drive south to Tra Su takes about two hours.

This is a good time to rest or watch the delta landscape flatten toward the Cambodian border.

11:30 AM: Tra Su Cajuput Forest — An Giang Province

You board a narrow motorboat and enter a canal to explore a landscape from a dream: a flooded melaleuca forest where the water is dark green and perfectly still, lotus blossoms cover the surface in every direction, and thousands of egrets and cormorants nest in the canopy overhead.

At the first stop, you switch to a smaller flat-bottomed boat paddled by hand.

Great egrets stand motionless in the shallows. Purple herons lift off from the lotus pads.

If you visit between August and November, the water level is significantly higher and the forest feels cathedral-like.

1:15 PM: Lunch in the forest

You eat at a stilted restaurant set above the water, surrounded by trees.

The menu features whatever is freshest, typically fried snakehead fish, water spinach with garlic, clear broth soup, and rice.

4:00 PM: Drive to Chau Doc — check in

You drive about an hour north along the Vinh Te Canal, which traces the Cambodian border.

The landscape is wide and flat — rice fields, sugarcane, and in the distance the dark outline of the Seven Mountains.

Note: Chau Doc is a genuinely multi-faith town — Muslim Cham, Buddhist Khmer, Catholic Vietnamese, and Chinese communities all live here side by side. The food reflects all of them. Before bed, look for Cham-style flatbread sold from carts near the night market.

8:00 AM: Pick up at hotel

After enjoying breakfast at your hotel, your tour guide and driver will pick you up at the lobby around 8:00 AM.

From there, you will board a comfortable air-conditioned vehicle and set off on your journey to the Chau Doc floating market.

8:45 AM: Floating village boat trip — Bassac River

A small wooden boat takes you out onto the Bassac River, where more than thirty fish-farming platforms stretch in a long, loosely organized line across the current.

These are not a tourist exhibit; this is where families live and sleep on these platforms.

Your guide can arrange to stop at one of the locals’ floating houses to watch their lives: raising basa catfish, snakehead, eel, and giant gourami in submerged cages that drop straight into the river below.

This is one of those experiences that stays with you in an oddly specific way.

10:00 AM: Chau Phong — Cham Muslim village

Just taking the ferry crossing brings you to Chau Phong, which is an ethnic Cham Muslim village that has occupied this riverbank for centuries, shaped by a culture almost entirely distinct from the Vietnamese majority surrounding it.

The Cham people were here long before Vietnam’s modern borders were drawn. They have maintained their own language, their Islamic faith, and their traditions with quiet resilience ever since.

You can walk the narrow lanes between wooden houses raised on stilts.  You will likely see women at traditional hand-looms weaving silk and cotton fabric in geometric patterns unique to this community

11:30 AM: Tay An Pagoda & Ba Chua Xu Temple — Sam Mountain

You visit two temples at the base of Sam Mountain. Tay An Pagoda is an architectural surprise: Vietnamese rooflines combined with Mughal-style domes and Khmer decorative carvings — a collision that somehow coheres into something genuinely beautiful. Inside, the air is thick with incense and hundreds of statues fill every surface.

Ba Chua Xu Temple, a short walk away, is the most visited pilgrimage site in southern Vietnam.

Dedicated to the Lady of the Realm, it draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims each year.

You will see people kneeling on the stone floor with real, specific requests — for a child’s recovery, for a business on the edge of failing, for a husband who has not come home.

1:00 PM: Depart for Ho Chi Minh City

The drive takes around 4.5 to 5 hours, with one comfort stop along the way.

The route heads north along the Vinh Te Canal before cutting east across the delta toward Saigon.

Practical note: Typical drop-off in District 1 is between 6:00 and 6:30 PM.

On weekends and Friday evenings, traffic can add 30–60 minutes. If you have a flight or dinner reservation, plan around 7:00 PM to be safe.

Conclude the Mekong delta tour 3 days, the tour guide and driver will assist you with unloading your luggage from the vehicle.

Please double-check your personal belongings before we say goodbye